Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am; I never leave it. I welcome our guests. I have been listening to the discussion for its duration. I am a little concerned about one or two things, namely, forward planning in the provision of services in a country that has an increased population, which is still increasing. I listened to somebody making a presentation in the House last night about what pertained in 2011. Many people forget that there were half a million people unemployed in 2011. People were emigrating on a daily basis in their thousands to countries all over the world. Whatever prevailed in 2011 is no longer relevant but what is relevant is the rapidity with which people came back again. The demands have increased. The demand for housing has increased and the demands for medical services and education services have increased. My question is simple. What provision has been made for this in the context of the present discussion? Have we made submissions to the effect that we need X number of GPs? Incidentally, we are heading to a situation - well, we are there - where if the GP is not available the only other place to go is an accident and emergency department. That creates further problems for the accident and emergency department. My colleague, Deputy Shortall, said there is a lot of opposition to primary care centres. There may well be but we need to have some locations like that. We need to solve the accommodation requirements of GPs and bring together a number of GPs under the same heading, i.e., the primary care centre. If we cannot do that, we are going to have serious voids, not only now but for the foreseeable future, in the availability of GPs. This is a primary requirement. The health and safety issues immediately occur and we need to forward plan in such a way as to ensure we have at least the minimum requirements in place on time. How far are we going down that road? Have we gone down that road adequately to ensure the HSE or whoever is responsible is fully aware of what the circumstances are?